Sniff packets then repeating these requests?

Question

I'm new to this and have basic understand of security. I was wondering if you could sniff packets from a handheld device (e.g iPhone, iPad, tablet.) and repeat these requests. For example...

John sent a Snapchat and wireshark captured this. Could you repeat that request, so it sends thousands of Snapchat's to john's recipient? Just an example.

Thanks, ben.

what you are describing is called a replay attack see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replay_attack — CaffeineAddiction, Mar 07 '17 at 20:16

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 05 '17 at 18:46

While you might capture and resent the captured data it might cause the same result as the original data. For example if you just capture encrypted TLS traffic replaying it will not cause the wanted action because TLS protects against such simple replay attacks. Even if you take an unencrypted HTTP request it might include a one-time token or some other protection so that the receiver will detect a resubmission of a previous request.
In summary: it might work or it might not work, depending on the underlying protocol and on the servers and applications behavior.

Sniff packets then repeating these requests?

1 Answers1